Deadly Furniture, Unsafe Infant Sleepers, Toxic Toys, and More Reasons to Save the Consumer Product Safety Commission

The CPSC’s impact is vital but sometimes invisible. As its staffers often note, it’s difficult to quantify deaths and injuries that don’t happen because of its efforts. But here are some of its key responsibilities:

• The agency coordinates the recall of hundreds of dangerous products every year, makes and enforces safety standards, and gives those standards teeth by levying fines against companies that violate them.
• It collects data about product-related injuries and deaths directly from the people affected by them, which alerts manufacturers, retailers, and the public about potential problems. This data also informs future recalls (as well as Consumer Reports’ journalism).
• Port inspectors working for the CPSC examine products coming in from overseas at U.S. ports of entry for unsafe items and counterfeit goods. This is an increasingly important aspect of the agency’s work as American consumers do more of their shopping online, and more of the things they buy originate overseas.
• The agency’s staffers also screen online marketplace listings for unsafe products. In 2024 alone, the CPSC screened millions of online listings and got 53,000 recalled or banned products removed from online retail platforms. 
• The agency conducts public education campaigns that help people avoid injuries from, for example, unsafe infant sleep environments, swimming pools, and fireworks. Its wacky social media presence even manages to make topics like lawn mower safety and carbon monoxide poisoning prevention entertaining—or at least sufficiently attention-worthy to be effective.

The data is clear: Deaths and injuries go down after the agency takes action in specific areas, including (but not limited to) regulations on garage doors, swimming pool drains, and bicycle helmets. Another striking example: In the five decades after Congress enacted the 1970 Poison Prevention Packaging Act, which the CPSC enforces, poisonings of children under age 5 decreased by 80 percent.

Here are more dangerous product categories that the CPSC has taken action on over the years:

Over the past 20 years, hundreds of people have died from unstable dressers tipping over onto them—many of them young children—and thousands more are treated in emergency rooms for the same reason each year. CR investigations have found that many of these incidents are preventable and that it’s possible to design less expensive furniture that resists tipping over. The CPSC has adopted new standards for dresser design and safety testing, and it often recalls unsafe dressers as well as anchor kits, which are required by law to accompany them, if they prove to be faulty as well.

The CPSC has focused a lot of its work on preventing suffocation and sudden unexpected infant deaths, which claim about 3,500 babies in the U.S. each year, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. This means taking a hard line on the kinds of soft and squishy baby sleep products that used to be standard in every newborn’s nursery but that we now know play a role in many of these tragedies. The CPSC oversees the safety of crib mattresses, bassinets, playpens, and many other types of baby products meant for sleeping. It has also banned inclined sleepers, padded crib bumpers, and “drop-side” cribs, which posed the risk of entrapment for babies. Thanks in part to all of this work, crib deaths decreased nearly 80 percent from 1973 to 2018.

Babies spend a lot of time feeding, and a nursing pillow is an indispensable item for many parents. But pillows that are too soft or allow caregivers to leave babies unattended on them can pose a risk of suffocation or other injuries. The CPSC says 154 infant deaths were associated with nursing pillows between 2010 and 2022. But all of them manufactured on or after April 23, 2025, must meet a new CPSC standard to be sold in the U.S.

Button cell and coin cell batteries send thousands of people to emergency rooms every year. If swallowed, they can burn through a child’s esophagus in just hours, causing irreparable damage and even death. Reese’s Law, passed in 2022 and named for a baby who died after swallowing a battery, empowered the CPSC to enact new safety standards for products that use these types of batteries, which it did in September 2023. Toys, party favors, and remote controls that don’t have secure enough battery compartments are now frequently subject to recalls.

Lead is a neurotoxin, particularly harmful to the developing bodies and brains of babies and small children. Phthalates are chemicals that can be found in some plastics, and they have been known to disrupt the body’s hormone development. Keeping both of these out of toys has been a priority. The CPSC has set rules for the maximum amount of lead and phthalates allowed in toys and other products meant for children, and it will recall those with amounts that exceed the limits. Recalls have included children’s hair clips, jewelry, water bottles, and toy gardening tools. 

The world is unlikely to run out of unsafe, counterfeit, toxic, or easy-to-misuse products, so there will always be more work for the CPSC to do. But here are a few specific safety regulations that have been in the works but have not yet been finalized, just some of the reasons the fired commissioners say they’re eager to get back to work:

• Lithium-ion batteries used in e-bikes, e-scooters, and similar micromobility devices, which have a tendency to catch fire when poorly made, overused, or used with the wrong charger. The fired commissioners had voted at the end of April to publish a proposed rule in the Federal Register, kicking off a 60-day public comment period. After they were fired, the remaining commissioners withdrew it.
• Portable generators, which can cause carbon monoxide poisonings, the so-called “silent killer.”
• Corded window coverings, which have been responsible for hundreds of strangulation incidents involving babies and young children, about half of those leading to deaths.
• Inflatable infant neck floats, marketed for use in a bathtub for babies as young as newborns, which can pose a serious risk of injury or death by drowning.
• Water beads, a harmless-looking “sensory toy” for young children that can become deadly if accidentally swallowed, inserted into the nose or ears, or inhaled.

• Right now the CPSC website is still up and running, and still has a lot of valuable safety information. Check it for past recalls and safety warnings, and sign up for alerts about future ones.
• Buying secondhand baby products or borrowing them can save you a lot of money, but the trade-off is that they might not comply with the most up-to-date safety standards and expert advice. A general rule, product safety advocates say, is never to use baby products that are more than 5 years old. And always check the CPSC website for recalls before buying any products secondhand.
• Be wary of extremely inexpensive products with unfamiliar brand names that you see online, especially those coming from overseas. If something is suspiciously inexpensive compared with its competitors, the manufacturer may have cut costs by skipping important safety testing or features, experts say.
• If you have any safety incidents or concerns about a product you’ve used or seen for sale, report it to the agency’s SaferProducts.gov database.